First
by sakurasencha
Summary: Sybil and Branson learn that beginnings must always be preceded by endings. A S3 speculation fic based on the ITV promo.


_It's that time again. The time where I unleash my Sybil/Branson feelings. *That scene* from the ITV promo gave me plenty of them, and this was the result. Special thanks to **3down1up** for continually keeping it real as my flawless beta._

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**First**

She hears a portentous creaking on recently bent hinges as the door is shoved open for the second time that day. He stands at the threshold, takes one look at his family huddled like captive prey in the eye of the rubble, and irrevocably decides then and there that Lady Grantham will indeed get her Christmas wish:

The Bransons are going back to Downton.

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She storms after him through the small spaces of their flat, trailing him down the hall, into their bedroom, back out again, and into the nursery as he haphazardly throws random necessities into open trunks strewn along the way.

"You want to uproot our whole lives because a few of our things were gone through?" she rails to his back.

He does not turn around. He is not in the mood to humor her euphemisms.

"They know where we live!" he counters, sidestepping overturned piles of books, papers, clothing, mementos; his shoes crunching over fractured picture frames and broken china – a unique treasure gifted to her by her American grandmamma and which her slipshod abilities had painstakingly maintained before hostile hands shattered them against the walls in their thirst for tyranny.

"That doesn't matter," she argues with a devil-may-care shrug. "They didn't find anything – they won't be back."

Her naïve pragmatism is starting to bother him. Wasn't _he_ supposed to be the idealist?

"They'll be back," he says wearily.

"Then we'll move!"

"We're leaving, Sybil. We're going back to England. Now."

Her protests do not diminish out the front door – luggage under his arms and a baby wailing in hers. They do not die down as the small family gathers into the waiting cab, are only exacerbated during the car ride thrumming with unspent tension down to the docks, and at last come to a head after the short trek up onto the gangplank.

She stops several feet from the gateway to their escape. "I'm not leaving!" she informs him once more. Brisk autumn air riles up her hair and bites them with impending winter. "None of us are leaving!"

"Just get on the boat, Sybil!"

"No," she grinds out. She stands her ground, for her feet have finally found the sense to simply stop moving. The baby wiggles in her arms. Other passengers whose path she is blocking are beginning to pile up, gawking at the spectacle in annoyance.

They are every one of them ignored.

"Get on board, Sybil. We can talk about what we want to do next when we're all back at Downton."

Her jaw juts. "I won't go," she says brusquely. "You can't _command_ me to do anything."

Like the stewing bystanders she is likewise ignored.

"I'm going to write to your family so they'll know to be expecting you," he says, halfway turned around to leave.

"I'm not going! I'm not afraid of them!"

"Well I am!" he snaps back around, and God help him but he'll throw his wife onto that bobbing boat if she doesn't consent to step onboard herself.

Mutiny still mounts like siege engines in her eyes, but for the baby's sake (not for his – and certainly not for her own), she relents. "Very well, then. I'd just as soon stay and fight; but if you'd rather run back to Downton and hide, then so be it." She turns and ascends the last few feet as he calls out to her.

"I'll follow on in a few days," he says, while she twists her head over her shoulder for a final, angry farewell:

"Don't bother."

It is the last thing she says to him until spring.

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_You can't leave well enough alone, can you? Only a few more days, you promised her, to settle our affairs, pack up our belongings, let out the flat. Small matters that don't take much time, and which leave time enough to write that one last story, that one last article to say your piece before you say goodbye. Not enough that they've ransacked your home and driven you away – no – you cannot leave without giving that final dig, without sticking your hand into the hornet's nest even though you know you'll come away nothing but stung and swollen._

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They explode through the door – gallingly enough – in the middle of broad daylight. He's not terribly surprised, for it is precisely as they had done before; except instead of bursting in on a mother nursing her baby, the very picture of innocence, they find exactly what they had been looking for.

_Caught in the very act._

_Traitor._

_Rebel._

There's nothing he can say in his defense as he is hauled outside and shoved into the back of a van with two armed guards poised beside him, just _begging_ for any excuse. He stays still, and silent, and rational enough to admit to himself that he is very much afraid.

The vehicle growls to a stop and he is roughly removed and delivered to the front gates of the gaol. A set of new, baleful faces take over and escort him inside. He can't see them, but he senses the heavy iron doors beginning to close behind him, and a small beam of sun catches his eyes before he hears them slam firmly shut.

It is the last time he sees daylight until the New Year.

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… _his Lordship's daughter assures us that he was to come after her in no more than three days time. He has by this date been missing nearly a month. They fear he has been unduly imprisoned, perhaps worse. His Lordship begs any information regarding his whereabouts._

_Sincerely,_

_George Murray_

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Robert shakes the rain out of his hair. It is pouring outside, and his hat had not been equal to the task. Holly and Ivy adorn the casements and banisters, but do nothing for this cheerless household, and even seem to be mocking him in light of the news he must bear on his return from London.

The family is waiting for him in the drawing room, save for his youngest who had been prowling the foyer all day, and who pounces on him as soon as his foot breaches the entry.

"Well? What did you find?" She takes care to measure her voice. She doesn't think she sounds worried; eager, perhaps, but calm enough considering the circumstances.

Robert is not ready for the reckoning. He begs her off with a look – _please give me a moment_ – and she retreats backwards while Barrow finishes removing his sodden coat.

God bless Mary, for she walks briskly in one second later and uses her gentle authority to direct Sybil into the library, after which she promptly leaves.

Robert soon joins his youngest daughter at the hearth. Their tete-a-tete is attended by no one else. She is palpably impatient, but he sits silently nursing his finger of brandy, warming the chill in his blood, for several long minutes. "He's not in prison," he at last says into the roaring fire.

Sybil frowns, confused. "Are you sure?"

"Yes. My contacts were very certain on that score. There is no record of him being processed anywhere."

Sybil sighs. There is much about Dublin prisons that they do not understand. "Sometimes the prisoners aren't listed, sometimes –"

"Sybil," he cuts her off curtly, and then sighs apologetically when he sees her smarted expression. "You may need to start considering…"

"What?" she asks sharply, a warning in her tone.

"He's been missing for some time. He's not in prison; apparently he's not anywhere at all. There are only so many reasons…."

"What are you suggesting?" she fires at him. "That he's left me?" She scoffs now, belligerent. "After all that's happened you still think him capable of the worst! I'll have you know he would never leave me, or our child. He's not a _monster_, Papa, no matter what you might think of him!"

His free hand rises in a placatory manner. "Sybil, please," he says, low, and hopefully pacifying. "That's not what I meant." He cannot bring himself to say what he meant, but Sybil reads the pity in his eyes well enough.

Her features harden. "No."

"We may need to start planning for the inevitable."

"No!" she yells. "I won't believe it!" She cannot recall rising but she is now on her feet, arms akimbo, telling her father off just like the good old days. "How can you –" she chokes on a sob. Not so like the good old days, after all. "How can you give up so easily?" Her brief interlude of grief transforms to fury, and avails itself on the nearest target. "I suppose you're glad for it! Haven't you always hated him? You've never accepted him and now you never have to – I bet you're happy he's gone!"

"Of course I'm not." His voice quavers like a wounded bird. "How could I ever want this?"

But she's not listening – how can she? – when she is already out of the room, up the stairs, up higher into the attics, shut securely into the darkened nursery. She lifts her dozing baby out of the crib, reeling at her father's audacity – for the very _suggestion_ is blasphemous – and clutches her darling close to her chest, rocking as she sobs, sobbing as she rocks.

She falls asleep.

Winter light is so timid and shy. It quakes at the mere thought of disturbing the prevailing grey of dawn, staving off its appearance for as long as possible.

But it always does come, eventually, and this morning its rays bounce off the white washed walls and dance provocatively into her eyes, awakening her. She calmly holds close her sleeping child, a clear determination marking her:

It is the last time she will ever despair.

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_You have written in your articles scurrilous statements regarding the Empire…_

_How did you know of the whereabouts of the rebel militants...? _

_These "sources" you have cited in your articles…_

_All we ask is that you comply with our demands and give them up!_

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Not all prison guards make a habit of cruelty. But there will always be those who pleasure in the power, who slake their improper hunger through the means of a proper profession. Birds of feather – yet among that disturbing set there are still preferences. Some favor the physical, the surreptitious brutality, while others delight in the psychological, who enjoy a good mind game.

He is one of the latter.

"I think your time here is nearly up," he says kindly. He says everything kindly.

"Why do you say that?" the prisoner asks openly. The poor soul has learned to trust him and his kindness. Gullible, perhaps, but in hopeless times one will scramble for any scrap that comes his way, and these types are always such idealists.

"Not much they've gotten out of you, have they? I know it seems harsh, the way they've got you locked up like this; but they don't keep lads like you here forever when they've got nothing to gain from it. I heard them saying you don't know nothing and there's no use keeping you anymore."

The prisoner smiles.

And he smiles, because he is believed.

"Look, there," he says not one week later. "What did I tell you? They're coming for you now." And just to place a final morsel of cheese onto the trap he flashes an encouraging smile.

The prisoner looks heartened – he rises from the dank floor of his own accord rather than waiting to be hoisted up by several pairs of rough arms. The prisoner is led away, down one corridor and into another, making turns at junctions he does not recognize or remember. He begins to reconsider. Farther and farther they go, and he starts to recalculate his alliances as he is prodded through passageways whose egress can only lead deeper into the dungeon rather than to the freedom of the open air.

The party halts before a neutral colored door. A room is waiting. His heart takes a demoralized leap, for today is not the day of liberation. Today is to be what he has endured countless times already: another interrogation, another fusillade of questions that he cannot rejoin – nor would he, even if he possessed the answers.

Time in this place is fluid as the sweat that pours from his skin, but he reckons a fair portion of it has passed since he first stepped through the iron gates – months, at least. Candy-coated memories of his old life play across the backs of his eyelids to drown out the shouting. _That_ man, the figure that flits blithely across his vision, kissing his wife and cooing his baby, would have thought it impossible to fall asleep with 100 watts beamed directly into his face. But deprivation can unwind even the strongest of sureties, and when the room clears to "let him think about it" he manages the feat readily.

When he wakes he is back where he had started, ensconced in three walls of hewn stone and one of forged metal, with a slip of light twirling to the floor from a narrow rectangle perched high above.

He gazes at the silver shaft, slightly delirious. The open sky, he wonders – hopes – but no. It is only moonlight sent to taunt him, to serve as a cruel reminder of what he will never see again – a thousand motes glittering in a piceous sky as he rocks his baby; pale silver reflecting off his wife's face and neck.

Darkness gives way to cumbersome dreaming, nightmares that belie the truth of coming dawn, and a future that he cannot now foresee:

It is the last time he will ever lose hope.

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"Perhaps we should send her to London. It would take her mind off of things."

"She won't go."

"She might." Cora looks down to her lap where she bounces the growing baby gaily, softly stroking the mop of downy curls. Her heart delights in having her grandbaby near, but is sickened with every new glimpse of her waning daughter.

Cora looks back to her eldest.

"I think you could convince her.

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"London might be good for you," Mary says seriously, frowning at the permanent rut her sister is close to forming through the carpet of her and Matthew's bedroom.

"Why?" Sybil asks, giving the carpet a short reprieve. "What is there for me in London?"

"Perhaps nothing. But there's certainly nothing for you here. And besides, it would be easier to make your inquiries in the city." Mary sighs as the pacing resumes. "You told me you wanted to be useful – I say be useful where you can actually accomplish something!"

Sybil chews her lips. She's fought practicality before, when good sense rubbed the wrong way against youthful zeal; but everything Mary looks and says is so terribly _convincing_ that before she has time to form a proper rebuttal Anna already has two trunks packed and stowed onto the boot of the car that Pratt has just brought round.

Aunt Rosamund accepts them gladly. She welcomes them with warmth and kindness, and the soothing salve of occupation. "In times such as these, distraction is a priceless commodity," she confers to Mary one afternoon while Sybil nurses up in her bedroom.

The former deluge of free time is easily disposed: errand after errand is contrived and executed, the high calling of motherhood naturally filling up the leftovers. But in those meager off hours Sybil is still prone to search. Fruitless endeavors at heart – dozens of inquiries are written and ignored; scores of Very Important Persons visited and pestered – though why she thinks the unknown Lady Sybil Branson would carry any more clout than the revered Lord Grantham is beyond Mary's reasoning.

The harshness of winter recedes. The more mild-manners of early spring bring forth small buds and shoots that line the walkways to Eaton Square. Her tenacity never once wavers, but daily she morphs. Her movements grow exacting, uninspired – increasingly mechanical. She patrols the city as an automaton, her once buoyant spirit robbed of its vitality.

Mary worries.

An inconveniently free afternoon assaults Sybil's mood as she gazes at the light rainfall pelting the window. The streets are bleak and dreary, dotted with a surfeit of umbrella tops – every one of them black.

But the tulips are beautiful.

"Would you like to go out for dinner?" Mary asks from the vanity.

"No."

"You're probably right. I'm not very hungry, either." She twists a necklace between her fingers. "Perhaps we can ask Jones to send up a cold platter…?"

"Whatever you like."

Mary sighs. Time and space have not been enough. Apparently a spoonful of reality is the only medicine fit to cure. "Really, darling," she says, equal parts caring sister and firm counselor. "He's not going to materialize in the window pane."

Sybil's shoulders tense as she whips around. Mary fortifies herself for the attack, but is surprised by an immediate surrender. Sybil gives a heavy, visible sigh, as if releasing weights from her limbs. She turns silently back around and resumes her watch by the window.

Mary walks over and runs a hand through Sybil's short bob of curls. "Darling…" she coos.

"Leave me alone, Mary," comes the measured reply.

"Don't be ridiculous."

"I told you – Go. Away."

"Don't tell me to do what you know I won't." And just as when they were little girls Mary drags her sister to the bed and they both climb inside – shoes and all – wrapping the blanket up past their chins and over their heads, children who optimistically believe that if they cannot see the world then the world cannot see them.

"Tell me," Mary commands.

"Tell you what?"

"Anything."

Sybil's mouth starts – then abruptly stops. She is reluctant, Mary can see. But it's right there, nesting on the tip of her tongue, something she yearns to reveal but for the constrained features holding her back, a quality that Mary had never before seen etched on her sister's face:

Shame.

"Go on, darling," Mary urges.

Sybil sniffs. "We fought," she says thickly.

"What do you mean?" It is dark under the heavy comforter. Mary's undressed ebony waves are stark against the pallor of her collarbone, and it is all so very nearly like Confession, like the one her husband had humored to attend with her when Sybil's eyes had first grown wide at the newness of the Cathedral.

"The last time I saw him, we –" The levies begin to crack. "We were unkind to each other!"

"Oh, Sybil," Mary breathes as Sybil breaks down. She guides her baby sister's head into the crook of her arm, ignores her ravaging hunger as she makes soft, soothing noises and smooths Sybil's chestnut hair.

Just as when they were little girls, indeed; but they are not little girls anymore. The monsters hiding in the dark are no longer mere shadows that cannot harm them, and they no longer possess the child's heart that lacks the courage to face them.

Dinner is skipped altogether.

It is the last time she cradles her baby sister to sleep.

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_How long must it continue before the fact is accepted? I am tired of London, tired of these useless efforts. Inquiries have been made a dozen times over with nothing but ghost stories and hearsay to show for it. _

Robert's all but consigned his son-in-law to an unmarked grave when a frantic stream of knocks invades his door. He admits the breathless courier, who promptly hands over a slip of paper that sends Robert staggering to his chair.

A message has arrived from Murray.

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At first Robert thinks he must have misheard.

"Let me repeat myself: that man is my son-in-law."

The uniformed man nods. "I understand, milord."

"He's been wrongfully imprisoned."

"Not according to our records, he hasn't."

"I demand that you give him up at once!"

"I'm sorry milord, but we can't just release a prisoner because you say so!"

Robert grows impatient. He has a single method for dealing with the infrequent occasion when he does not get his way, and purposefully reaches inside his coat.

"What will it take," he taps the chequebook for emphasis, "to get him out?"

An hour later Robert is not considerably more impoverished, but infinitely more relieved when a dirty and reeking body that somewhat resembles his son-in-law is dragged outside and left to stand unsteadily before him.

Branson's eyes are narrowed to slits, his hands shielding them from the abrupt brightness. The sunlight is relentless, and the air is warmer than he last remembers.

"Your Lordship?" he asks groggily, as if just waking up. He is genuinely confused, unsure as to why he is now viewing the blindingly lit image of his father-in-law, and believes that he must still be sleeping, that at long last his dreams have taken a turn for the pleasant.

"Come, Branson." Robert indicates an idling motor. "Get in the car."

Branson steps back. Now he is nearly afraid, for the apparition speaks. Perhaps this is not a dream after all, but instead some far flung memory ricocheting back to the fore. His Lordship beckons him to the car and he complies with the order, nearly opens up the driver's side door before his Lordship takes control and leads him to the back seat.

The car has driven five miles before anyone says anything.

"We've had quite a time finding you. Sybil has been beside herself," Robert says casually, as if Branson were nothing but a naughty schoolboy run off from his mother at the village fair.

Branson stares impassively ahead. His face has relinquished not a single iota of emotion. Lord Grantham begins to wonder if anything has registered, whether the blank slate seated next to him has fully comprehended the miraculous salvation, before a cracked voice ends the silence.

"I thought I was going to die in there…"

It is the last time he sees his son-in-law weep.

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Sybil stares out of the window at the passing motors. Mary thinks it a rather tortuous practice, but says nothing.

They'd been out nearly all day, and had returned to a small stack of notes. Mary peruses the pile, at last coming to the final letter. Her eyes widen as she reads it through for the third time.

Sybil sense something amiss. "Mary?" she turns to ask, curious and alert. "Mary, what is it?"

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Robert had deemed it prudent not to alert anyone until he was absolutely sure. He would not drive his daughter's hopes up, only to see them collide painfully back into the ground. He may disapprove of every single thing she's done for the past several years, but he is still her father, and he still loves her.

Yet even when he _is_ sure, even when he has procured a solid body as evidence, he still decides to wait until they've at least reached Liverpool. Enough time has passed that a few insignificant hours more would hardly make a difference, and would give both men time to process. Robert wires just before the eastbound train departs, and expects the news to be conveyed to London more quickly than they are.

But they still arrive at Downton first.

"_What do you mean 'they've found him'?" Sybil is pulling at her hair, partway to shouting._

_Mary's rather brief explanation is taking too long. Sybil orders the car, snatches up the child playing with blocks by the fire, and heads for the door._

"_Sybil! We have to pack!" echoes a futile plea to her back. But Sybil, stopping only long enough to throw on a hat, coat, and gloves, to recall the handbag by the door stuffed with nappies and bottles, is already braving the sheets of rain outside._

Robert lends him clothes. Thomas draws him a bath. Even the venerable and staunchly disapproving Carson offers his assistance in any way. Branson thinks it fairly ironic that he must be subjected to a dungeon – a literal suffering through purgatory – before he is forgiven his transgressions.

Or, more likely, is that they had never disliked him as much as he (or they) had once believed.

_Other passengers on the train do not give her a wide enough berth. It is cramped; the baby is fussy. Mary remains as insufferably unruffled as she usually does. _

_Sybil holds back her heaving, feels herself suffocating and exploding all at once._

He wanders into her room. Her belongings are not there.

He visits the nursery. It is empty, cold, and dusty.

_The storm follows them North._

"_We'll be there soon," Mary assures her as Pratt starts the engine. It is an accurate statement; the station is only a few minutes away from the Abbey – the longest few minutes of her life._

"They'll be here soon," Robert tells his son's unreadable face. "You should eat something," he suggest brightly.

They go into the breakfast parlor. A sumptuous array greets them that looks completely unappetizing.

He pokes at a piece of fruit. He thinks – he is just starting to recall – that strawberries were Sybil's favorite.

_Mary takes charge of the little one. Sybil moves like a hurricane as she alights from the car without assistance, barges into the tepid rainfall and through the gaudy, oversized doors._

"They're here!" issues softly down the corridor. Everyone looks at him. It takes a slow moment for him to comprehend, and then a beat later his seat is empty.

No one else so much as moves a muscle.

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For a second they are both frozen in place, and simply stare.

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It is the first time they see each other for half a year.

* * *

_This is obviously where I would insert a gif of *that scene* from the promo, but unfortunately I don't think this website supports such multi-media functions :D. And I'm just going to ignore the fact that new spoilers have completely torn this theory to shreds, thank you very much._

_Thanks for reading!  
_


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